Examining Zionism: The next topic for ONE LAND, MANY VOICES, this Friday at 9:00AM on KBOO!

Join us this Friday at 9:00AM on KBOO Community radio for the next edition of ONE LAND, MANY VOICES.

This week Hala Gores and William Seaman welcome New York University Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and History, Zachary Lockman, to the program for a discussion of Zionism. Zionism is broadly understood as the movement supporting the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people. In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution 3379 declaring that Zionism is a form of racism. Is Zionism inherently racist? What role has Zionism played, and what role does it continue to play, in the Palestine-Israel conflict? Join us this Friday for a discussion of Zionism on ONE LAND, MANY VOICES with our special guest, Professor Zachary Lockman. You can tune in to KBOO Community radio at 90.7FM in Portland, 100.7FM in Corvallis, 91.9FM in Hood River, and on the web at www.kboo.fm ... and you can take part in the conversation by dialing into our studio line at 503-231-8187.

More about our special guest this Friday:

Professor Zachary Lockman:

My main research and teaching field is the socioeconomic, cultural and political history of the modern Middle East, particularly the Mashriq. Under the influence of the "new social history" and "history from below" movements of the 1960s and 1970s, I did my doctoral dissertation on the emergence and evolution of a working class and labor movement in Egypt from the late nineteenth century until the Second World War; it was published in 1987 in a book co-authored with Joel Beinin. Since then I have sporadically continued to work on Egypt, with a special interest in society, culture and politics in the 1882-1919 period. I have also done a great deal of research on Palestine, manifested (among other things) in a 1989 edited volume on the Intifada and a 1996 book on relations between Arab and Jewish workers and labor movements in Palestine during the British mandate period, and various articles and papers. My most recent book is an introduction to the history and politics of Orientalism and Middle East studies, with particular attention to the study of the Middle East in the United States since 1945 and its intersections with U.S. policy in that region. Along the way I have served as president of the Middle East Studies Association and as a member of the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies, and as an editor (and currently a contributing editor) of Middle East Report.

Comments

Reading KBOO community broadcaster William Seaman's letter today in support of his co-broadcaster Hala Gores recent piece on Al Nakba, a.k.a. the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs and founding of the Jewish state in 1948 alongside Fred Logan's letter asserting Israeli victimhood made me wonder about situational ethics.

I spent April in Israel reading and translating from the Hebrew and Arabic regional press the stories about the Egyptian Intelligence services uncovering an Iranian and Hizb'Allah weapons smuggling network through the Sinai desert into Gaza via tunnels and stories from Lebanon's As Safir and London's Al Awsat on an Israeli spy ring in Lebanon that has been
mining information on Hizb'Allah activities on its own and in concert with Iran for nearly a decade. Very little of the revelations from these two investigations has filtered into the English language western media. Can Israelis and Palestinians be simultaneously victims and victimizers?
Neither KBOO staff or listeners nor Seymour Hersh are asking.

One question Mr. Seaman hasn't asked Ms. Gores: If Gazans are starving and lacking essentials because of the Israeli blockade, why has there been no shortage of missiles, rockets and the materiel that they are assembled from getting into Gaza through the tunnels that the Israelis cannot bomb faster than they are built? Maybe Gazans should consider importing edibles and medical supplies through those tunnels?
Mitch Ritter
Beaverton, OR 97006
(503) 645-6374